I read this a few days ago. My theory is that Picard retroactively changed how people thought of Kirk. Kirk may not have been Zapp Brannigan, but he was definitely more Zapp Brannigan-ish than Picard.
Which is to say that nerds must have unseemly amounts of free time. But I'll have to give them a pass because Star Trek was necessary, if not sufficient, for Obama to become president.
I saw it linked on FB and read it then. I basically buy the argument, but it leaves some things out. I don't remember all the details of the show to argue with the claim that we never see Kirk 'womanizing', we see him either re-encountering old girlfriends who broke up with him, or using his masculine wiles to manipulate women for practical purposes (or getting married while suffering from amnesia due to a head injury, but that episode doesn't count), but it sounds about right. On the other hand, the assumption that he's got masculine wiles sufficient to reliably manipulate anyone he wants to does imply a certain amount of recreational womanizing inbetween episodes, doesn't it?
Which is to say that nerds must have unseemly amounts of free time.
I have to do something at work while I wait tensely for the paralegal to finish a task that really should not have taken that long.
And I resent being called a nerd.
(Oh, who am I kidding.)
Also, in contrast to Spock and McCoy, Kirk was the closest thing to a square jawed Buck Rogers stand in that the show offered, so it's not too surprising the people remember him in that role even if he didn't play it all the time.
I think the memory of Kirk is contaminated with memories of Zap Brannigan because Futurama was a better show and it ran much longer.
That is interesting. Thanks. (reading it now).
I started to watch the original series a couple of years ago but stopped after the Khan episode that sets up the later movie because on the whole the show seemed surprisingly retrograde and awful.
on the whole the show seemed surprisingly retrograde
Although that's sort of to be expected for a show that's now half a century old.
This is heresy. Star Trek is great. I will brook no disagreement.
And Fred Clark has just read this as well, making some connections to his world that his regular readers should readily glean.
This made me wonder if, when I tried to watch the original series, my enjoyment was partly blocked by an assumption that there must be absolutely nothing interesting to follow in the Kirk character.
10/11: The essay also talks about this assumption - the march of continual progress.
Abigail Nussbaum recently remarked on Twitter that she "saw a tumblr post yesterday about how Luke Skywalker defies so many toxic masculinity tropes common to male heroes." She "[w]anted to reply saying 'yes, that's because he was written in the 70s, when most of that was pretty unexceptional.'"...
Face it: Kirk is a big nerd who punches people sometimes, but also memorises poetry and has nice chats with Spock's mom and loves the ship intensely. He's less tasked with enacting toxic masculinity in all its forms than many a contemporary male lead.
Inspired by another part of the essay, I also found this count-up: the original series had about comparable female creative presence (measured by percentage of episodes with at least one woman writer) as any Trek series since.
He killed us for no other reasons beyond asserting masculinity and character development. Asshole.
on the whole the show seemed surprisingly retrograde and awful
That is incorrect; or, what Barry said.
The entire pleasure of watching original Trek now is tied to the earnestness with which it strived to communicate humanist goals and morality... in space, with aliens, and no budget.
15: He's less tasked with enacting toxic masculinity in all its forms than many a contemporary male lead.
This is definitely a trend since the seventies, and I have thoughts about it that I haven't quite put into typeable form yet.
I'm certainly a less demanding male than I was in the 70s. Back then, I'd just assume a woman was going to cook me dinner and clean up everything.
The entire pleasure of watching original Trek now is tied to the earnestness with which it strived to communicate humanist goals and morality...
I can't wait to sit down on the sofa and watch the earnestness.
The entire pleasure of watching original Trek now is tied to the earnestness with which it strived to communicate humanist goals and morality... in space, with aliens, and no budget.
Similar to original Doctor Who (but more preachy).
I can't wait to sit down on the sofa and watch the earnestness.
It. is. Awe-inspiring.
I'm ok with not liking the show even if other people aren't. I won't belabor my complaints though.
22 suggests an underdeveloped sense of irony.
Or an overdeveloped sense of earnestness?
15: He's less tasked with enacting toxic masculinity in all its forms than many a contemporary male lead.
This is definitely a trend since the seventies, and I have thoughts about it that I haven't quite put into typeable form yet.
Yeah, that seems like an idea worth exploring. On the surface it's plausible but not simple. It also makes me think, tangentially, of this post that DeLong highlighted -- both in terms of thinking about masculinity, but also that there's always going to be a difference between fiction which reflects items which the culture is currently experiencing, vs those which are looking back and written from a perspective in which the changes in question have become tropes and comfortable historical narrative. The latter will be more self-aware but is also likely to be more schematic and less messy (for lack fo a better word).
18: I read a nice breakdown of Jaws a while back which noted that Chief Martin Brody was a very 70s type of male lead for an adventure movie/thriller.
there's always going to be a difference between fiction which reflects items which the culture is currently experiencing, vs those which are looking back and written from a perspective in which the changes in question have become tropes and comfortable historical narrative
ISTR making the observation that the excellent BBC series "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy", though set in the 1970s, looks a lot less "Seventies" than the mediocre film version, also set in the 1970s, because the BBC version was actually made in the 1970s, which decade didn't really look very Seventies at all.
To the OP, I have watched some (but not much) Star Trek, but I've seen various documentaries about it (The Captains, To Be Takei, For The Love Of Spock* as well as David Gerrold's** book about writing The Trouble With Tribbles) and, for what it's worth, most of the cast members go along with the stereotypes of Kirk that the article is trying to debunk.
On one hand, that's not surprising, their memory and sense of the characters can shift over time just like anybody else's. But it probably matters that Shatner himself is reportedly vain, egotistical, brash, and a "relentless" flirt, so I'm sure some of that bleeds into people's sense of the character.***
* Incidentally, The Captains, in which Shatner interviews all of the other actors who have played the Captain in a Star Trek series, is the least well known of the three but the one I found most interesting.
** Who notes, "Star Trek was about social justice from day one -- the stories were about the human pursuit for a better world, a better way of being, the next step up the ladder of sentience. The stories weren't about who we were going to fight, but who we were going to make friends with. It wasn't about defining an enemy -- it was about creating a new partnership. That's why when Next Gen came along, we had a Klingon on the bridge. "
*** Particularly since the writing on TOS wasn't completely consistent, it seems natural that given multiple readings of the character people would gravitate towards the one which resembles the actor.
TOS can only have one meaning on Unfogged.
28 I recall that being observed by the late Charlie McMenamin who used to be a frequent commenter at B&T, in this splendid blog post.
I was curious why the author of this article knew so much about Star Trek. I found what she wrote about Spock after Leonard Nimoy died, touching.
http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/articles/nimoy-and-spock-reflections-and-farewells/
30 As much as I love the original ST this is very true.
31 Or a very similar observation about how run down things looked in the movie compared to the truly excellent series.
Interesting. I wonder how much of this is involved in reactions to the J.J. Abrams movies. I detested both of them viscerally, essentially for the reasons articulated in the OP link, and I think every review I've read by SF people agrees. Yet the non-genre reviewers mostly read them as passable popcorn action movies. I wonder what the majority view is among Trek fans. Especially I wonder how much of the current fanbase is MRA types and what they actually think of TOS.
Just quickly, Susan Faludi's Backlash goes a ways to explaining what happened between the 60s and 80s wrt gender relations.
That's why when Next Gen came along, we had a Klingon on the bridge.
God, the Klingon on the bridge. You know, people say the Troi episodes are bad, and they say the Wesley episodes are bad, but neither are as bad as the friggin' Worf episodes.
I wonder how much of the current fanbase is MRA types
Maybe things have changed, but my impression was that, due to ST's basically left leaning stance, conservatives traditionally either disliked it or else liked it by willfully ignoring most of social/politcal message. In that sense, the Abrams movies gave right wingers the ST they had been waiting for.
In the early days of the blogosphere, I read a number of rants from libertarians about how Star Trek sucked cuz socialism while Star Wars was great because apparently that's about Rugged Individualism...or something.
Star Wars was great because apparently that's about Rugged Individualism living under the thumb of an authoritarian empire.
Thinking of some older fans I know, more than a few are squarely in the Trump demographic.
You don't understand the Roark-like nature of moisture farming.
Also, how did I not notice the Hornblower parallel before? Criticism fail.
With Kirk? Because there really isn't much of one. Whatever you say about Kirk, he's not a tortured, sensitive intellectual who's isolated from the cloddish subordinates who worship him but fail to understand him.
"We're going to grow moisture, in a desert, and dare the looters to try to stop us."
I mean, ship's captain, sure. But more than that, they're not that close.
40: Robot Chicken nailed that.
34 I utterly despise the J.J. Abrams movies. As in hated hated hated them. They suck. And I refuse to acknowledge them as canon. And I don't normally think of myself as part of any fandom that gives a shit about canon. Wait, what were we talking about again?
I still have fond memories of the movie with the whales. I don't remember the other ones. I probably didn't see the ones newer than that.
34 I utterly despise the J.J. Abrams movies. As in hated hated hated them.
For the record, I liked the first Abrams movie, but dislike the others.
43 IIRC Rodenberry was pretty explicit about Hornblower as an inspiration.
44,46: Cloddishness, no. But as I remember them the clods were never the major element in Hornblower (at least once he has his own command). Mostly it was, basically, nerdery: working through problems, attention to detail, curiosity, delight in ingenuity. Admittedly far more Picard than Kirk; but then again, Hornblower is a much more Kirkian figure in Bush's POV than in his own.
50: I haven't seen the most recent (not directed or written by Abrams). While I thought the first better than the second, it was still awful. And I thought not just bad as an ST movie, but bad as a movie.
Sort of OT, but all I know about Hornblower comes from watching the Meridian Broadcasting TV series from the late 90s/early00s. Is it reasonably representative of the books?
In the books, his name is based on the chronic flatulence of the men in his family. The TV series skips that.
54 I enjoyed that series and wished they had made more.
I felt the same way about The Simpsons until they just kept making more.
48: They're better if you imagine they're mislabeled Star Wars movies.
54: The series isn't wildly far off, but the books are all the inside of Hornblower's head as he's being neurotic about being action-hero-ish. That's hard to get across on film.
In film, you could give the neurotic internal monologue to a second in command who is drawn from Jewish stereotypes.
We need a Flashman inspired space opera.
55: In the books, his admiring crew-members do, on occasion, refer to him as Old Horny, if I remember rightly. Apparently that wasn't funny in the 1940s.
61: A Dune style whispering voice-over would be the obvious way to include the neurotic internal monologue. I'm sure the TV series would have been improved by that.
I suppose I should try to read Forester. I think today is the first time I figured out that there is both an E. M. Forster and a C. S. Forester.
The whole "C. S." but not "Lewis" thing wasn't helping me either.
Today is also the first time I figured out that it's "E. M. Forster" and not "E. M. Forester." In conclusion, British people are unnecessarily confusing.
I suppose I should try to read Forester.
You should. The gripping battle scenes in A Room With a View are great.
You can lead a full life without reading any; they're not great art. But if you like adventure stories about insecure men on boats, they're good.
I read about 2/3rds of "Lord Jim" before getting tired of it. Of course, he was off the boat by then.
Back in the 60s, anyone wearing pants and in charge was assumed to be a manly manful man, which includes womanizing and, if not the inclination towards casual violence, the capacity for it. It went without saying. If they also had feelings, intellectual pursuits, and Platonic friendships, it just made them a self-confident and well-rounded manly, manful man. "The love that dare not speak its name" was a literal description. The facts that women and minorities had begun to make inroads in Western culture and legal systems by the time Star Trek aired, and that Star Trek in general or Kirk in particular weren't nearly as retrograde as we might think, is interesting but doesn't change the fact that those inroads were still very transgressive. But in the 70s and 80s, some women wanted to wear pants, be in charge, or hard to believe as it is do both at once. Therefore, manly manfulness has to be more explicit ever since.
I began writing that halfway through reading that article, while thinking something like "OK, it's interesting that Kirk isn't as much of a womanizer as we think, but it's still true of the show in some sense, in what it depicted as normal behavior or gender roles, right?", but now that I've finished reading the article and thought about it a bit more, maybe I'm just engaging in/excusing that Kirk Drift myself, I don't know.
Never read Hornblower or watched ST:TOS, but I was aware of a connection just because I've watched half a dozen or so episodes of ST:TNG, including something or other where the crew does a holodeck simulation of a sailing ship.
"The love that dare not speak its name" was a literal description.
Aliens or same-sex.
Of course, sex with aliens was only forbidden because we didn't know enough about alien physiology to know the sex wasn't gay.
Zapp Brannigan is a god among men, you pitiable hippies!
Wait, we were supposed to be laughing at him?
This makes me feel much better about having watched orders of magnitude more Star Trek than Futurama, such that I had to go read up on who Zapp Brannigan was.
Agree with LB re: Hornblower. Any resemblance with OST is very superficial.
I've written before about liking SW as I understood its intension, and being stunned by its rapidly-formed cult of believers. Ditto for all Star Treks: couldn't take them seriously.
I remember Beat to Quarters as a love story. In a complementary--and obviously lesser--way, it combined with Pride and Prejudice in suggesting to my 15-year-old self that I might find love with an intellectual equal, if we could survive mishaps and barriers and get to know one another.
And maintained a personal exercise regimen, however awkward the circumstances.
I think I've mentioned this in another place, but from what I've read (secondhand) about the backlash argument in 35.book, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom feels like a prime example. It takes an woman who's independent at the outset and seems to take narrative joy in humiliating and vulnerablizing her over and over. (Not to mention all the racism.)
I was only in 2010 that I stopped putting my hands over my chest whenever I saw somebody from South Asia.
83: IIRC both Spielberg and Lucas were getting divorced at the time. But then divorce rates presumably are part of the overall mix.
The 60s had weird "what if there was a very good reason you were promiscuous?" movies:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_November_(1968_film)
Kirk's actions in womanizing because he had to save the universe seems to be part of that.
It is kind of a weird transitional fantasy and not surprising that it went away.
The beginning of that article with the "you sir are a bore that knows nothing of the original star trek" was not really a good look. The stripping away of details in cultural memory is inevitable and not really bad.
86. There was a 2001 remake with Keanu Reeves and Charlize Theron. Looks terrible, is now on my watchlist.
87 would be better if "2001" were in italics.
88. So glad you raised that point. Space 1999, in so many ways superior to Star Trek, had an aesthetic very much like 2001's, and similar squishy humanistic values,
I have a real dilemma-- growing up, I watched it (along with the original Star Trek, I Dream of Genie, and later, when stoned, soap operas and game shows if at home) on a small black and white television. The well-written star trek episodes have survived the appalling transition to color ( but holy shit, gamesters of triskelion, not doing that one again) OK, I can't deal with the bad ones though. But Landau/Bain? I can't manage the episodes in color. I tried one with the colors muted, I guess I have to reconcile myself to either laboriously changing the settings to enjoy them or having an experience that feels suspiciosly like a ketamine-infused nostalgia drip.
To refer to an earlier thread, I am probably not actually seeking advice on how to resolve the dilemma.
I submit that Galaxy Quest contains nearly all the good parts about Star Trek, plus parody. So rather than suggest people watch Star Trek, they should be steered toward Galaxy Quest.
Most of my early Trek watching, despite being in the early-to-mid 1980s in reruns, was on a tiny B&W TV. The color didn't bother me so much when I ran into it; it was intended to be in color, not colored after the fact.
Let's hang out in the driveway after tha bar closes.
I've been watching Treme, which I missed when it was on. I've seen worse.
Fun game: other fictional characters who are remembered as the opposite of what they were.
E.g. Uncle Tom was not at all an Uncle Tom. Little Black Sambo was a clever and resourceful little kid (the illustrations were kinda offensive).
Abraham and Sarah were more pimp and prostitute than husband and wife, and Sarah was totally hot, until she had an unexpected baby late in life.
Judah Maccabee was an intolerant religious zealot fighting to ethnically cleanse a relatively liberal and religiously tolerant province, using terroristic tactics.
79 Farscape lover here. And you almost ruined Rygel for me but he occasionally and with great reluctance and a lot of hemming and hawing and a lot more kvetching does the right and selfless thing. Maybe Rygel is Trump without all the winning.
Maccabees was for real one of the foundational texts of crusading theology.
I can say this with authority, having read 1.8 books on the subject.
Any Lexx lovers here? Former assistant deputy backup courier for the Ostral-B heretics, security guard class four on the Cluster, and captain of the Lexx, Stanley H. Tweedle was very much the anti-Kirk, and nowhere more so than his constantly frustrated attempts at womanizing.
For what it's worth, I don't recall Kirk standing out as one of the reasons I didn't like the original series. Maybe my standard for his behavior is already low; that's just Kirk being Kirk, amirite?
My impression, based not on the linked piece but on my guess that Wrath of Khan has heavily shaped most people's perceptions of Kirk because it's actually non-awful and watchable, is that Kirk's reputation is built not so much on behavior we actually see but references other characters make to his past.
101 last is plausible, and kind of great given the theme of the film.
The most familiar Shatner impressions are based on that movie too, right? The pauses in "still...old...friend" and "Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!"
Don't blame me for breaking the horizontal scroll on the page. It's Shatner's fault.
Page-widening posts hit Unfogged. Feels like old times.
Consistent with 101.2, it appears Wrath of Khan is where they introduced the Kobayashi Maru nugget of his past.
106: and ST2 has the idea about Kirk being a careless womaniser - we meet the embittered Carol Marcus and their estranged son.
I can confirm 98, having read .8 books on the subject.
96: interesting one. From the Iliad: Hector doesn't really hector anyone and Pandarus doesn't pander to anyone (though he does sort of in later stories).
96.last is definitely true, in any case, regardless of how the crusaders felt about it.
Victor Frankenstein is a pretty reasonable guy.
In the Trekkian spirit of open and honest inquiry I am bound to point out that teo's books and mine do not sum to 2.6.
Dammit, Mossy. I was trying to paper over that.
A man's claims should exceed his achievements, or what's an internet for?
It's for atomised individualism. I don't care about your achievements.
My kobayashi maru is I've gone and locked myself out of my work computer. Again.
-- An interesting approach to the scenario, Cadet Freed. You feigned technical incompetence in order to disable the tactical simulator.
|| With heartfelt apologies for the long delay, I have now got "The Cave of White Water" under way again. It's probably the warmer weather that's doing it. Anyway, expect next chapter soon, in which our hero does very little actual work but engages in long rambling discussions of centre-left politics. Hey, they say write what you know.
|>
118: That's a bright spot in an otherwise miserable month. Also a good excuse to re-read all the chapters to date!
Quick before I work out a way to charge for reading, a plan sure to net me literally ones of pounds.
This is amusing: http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/i-just-love-this-juicero-story-so-much-1794459898
120: The trick is to take the ones of pounds, bundle them into tranches, and resell them to Norwegians.
My kobayashi maru is I've gone and locked myself out of my work computer. Again.
Less Kobayashi Maru and more Global Thermonuclear War.
The advantage of Global Thermonuclear War is that you can't just replace the expensive machine by squeezing with your hands. The tritium will just float past your fingers.
Speaking of radioactive wastelands, I'm kind of excited about my upcoming trip to Vegas even though I'm unlikely to have more than a few hours of free time. I never go anywhere that's not-Nebraska.
Vegas is fun, Moby! I was there for trivia championships last summer and walking around, first I was horrified by it all and then I got sort of a warm generalized love of humanity, which is rare for me. The ridiculous fountain show is worth watching.
Probably. But I'll be in meetings for something like 12 hours a day.
I'm probably not supposed to get drunk. I forget the rules for business travel.
Hey, let me tell you my story of how I pissed away $90+ in 30 seconds. I was buying plane tickets for next Feb for our extended family because we found a good deal, 8 people for $3100 to central America. But the airline web site sucked and kept timing out and in fact the tickets went up even in just the time we were trying to book them (which I have to wonder if that's a separate scam on its own). It takes some time to enter passport DOB etc. for 8 people. So finally on the fifth try it went through, and I got to the payment page and rushed to enter my card and the charge went through. The I realized that even though I had pushed the "convert to USD" button that was just for informational purposes, not how the charge would be processed, so I had paid in Euros (because I was in Europe it sent me to that website even though the airline is in Miami and flights originated in US) but hadn't used my $0 international fee card. Contacted the airline- nope, can't cancel and redo the transaction (I thought you always get 24 hr to cancel plane tickets, or is that just through Orbitz/Expedia/etc?). Can't change the charge to a different card. Can't process in USD instead of EUR. Called the card company, they can't process it in USD, and now since I admitted I had made the purchase I was not allowed to dispute it to try again even though the "convert to dollars" was pretty unclear about what it was doing. So 3% fee pissed away to Citibank it is, thanks for the value I got for that money.
Ooh, let me tell you another one, how I lost $240 of benefits at work- we can submit bike commuting expenses, so I had bought some stuff on Amazon, but since the Amazon account is in my wife's name, even though the stuff was for my bike, they rejected all of it as invalid, even though if I had walked into a bike shop and paid cash and submitted a receipt with no one's name on it they would have approved it. I have to wonder if our benefits management company gets some cut or other profit from denying claims.
Also- while we were out of the country last week and our house was empty, the cable company claims someone bought an on-demand Mickey Mouse show at midnight for $2.99. But I got that one refunded!
And I overpaid for some things I bought in an African market involving haggling because I suck at and hate haggling, but at least that money goes to people who aren't corporate greedheads.
Central America actually used to be part of China.
KDrum has a good point to make on the Juicero story: yes, the juicer was ridiculous, but the real ripoff margins in this story aren't in the juicer but the bags.
Juicero was recently forced to cut the price of its press from $699 to $399, so it probably isn't even much of a moneymaker. The bags, on the other hand, are highway robbery at $5-7 each. At a guess, the gross margin on the press is around 50 percent at best, but the gross margin on the juice bags is probably 90 percent or more.
I think that highlights how stupid their plan is even more. Keurig knows it makes the profit on the little cups of coffee so it basically gives away the machine. Even at pure avarice, the Juicero people are shit.
The only way it makes sense if it they know the juice tastes like shit so nobody will buy a second bag.
submitted a receipt with no one's name on it they would have approved it.
NUH UH, NO ONE DOESN'T BIKE TO WORK, HE TAKES THE BOAT.
OT: Before you die, close comments on your blog.
I was there for trivia championships last summer and walking around, first I was horrified by it all and then I got sort of a warm generalized love of humanity, which is rare for me
Are you sure you weren't on ecstasy?
Is it bad that I recognize 4chan speak now?
136. Preach it.
138. Is it worse that I recognise the dialect (for want of a better word) but don't associate it with 4chan? I think it's gone mainstream.
137: I'd like to think I'd have had SOME tinder success had that been the case, but perhaps I don't understand ecstasy.
(This is maybe the right place to say that I do understand corporate greedheads, as I found out yesterday my job won't be a job anymore after the next two weeks, but actually my corporate overlords are good about the severance and so on and I'll be in good shape as I figure out what comes next. Not finance, probably not ecstasy.)
At a guess, the gross margin on the press is around 50 percent at best, but the gross margin on the juice bags is probably 90 percent or more.
I've got to think that the process of mailing juice bags back to the manufacturer for recycling really cuts into that margin.
136: When I see shit like that, it's like an irate form of exasperation - why are you toddlers creating messes for everyone else to clean up? Don't you know we're tired and don't feel like cleaning up your shitty messes? Can't you just smoke a lot of pot and go to bed instead of actively creating messes like this?
140.2 Good luck Thorn!
Speaking of kobayashi maru's and job hunting I've an interview for a faculty position coming up next week. First a phone/Skype interview with the institution's US home base and then a 2 day affair at the regional campus. Any advice, especially from academics here who've been on search committees or the like, or chris y's wife, would be most welcome.
142: Is that what you tell your kids? Does it work?
140.2: Good luck, Thorn!
142: Except they all voted Trump to the extent they aren't Russian.
140.2: Whoa. That sounds...I don't know! I guess it depends on whether you liked your job or were sick of your job, and whether you can easily pick up something similar or you have something in mind, or whether you're just plain glad to have a break from work. That sounds wide open!
140.2. Best of luck, Thorn. It sounds a bit stressful.
I had the funniest interaction with my cow-orker yesterday. We were sort of dancing around the subject of smoking weed, each gradually revealing a little more about his relationship to wacky tobaccy until we both finally confessed to being heads. The good news is I might have a new connection through him, so no more fucking around on the dark net to get weed. Also he showed me an Instagram account of someone in DC who is selling books and giving away free weed products with every book as a way to get around the prohibition on selling there. This morning my cow-orker and I had a fascinating conversation about his friend who sells books, how many books we read in a typical month, access to book reading equipment, and different kinds of books such as those well suited to treating back pain or for accompaniment by music.
Relevant because 4/20.
150: If I understand things correctly, between severance and eventual unemployment, I won't actually get to the point where there's no money coming in until over a year from now. So even for someone as worry-prone as me, this leaves a lot of opportunity to not stress about the future but get our family stable and figure out what I want to do to be able to take care of things.
I was at a therapy intake appointment yesterday afternoon for a group we're going to take where the girls will get to spend time working with other survivors or child abuse or siblings of survivors and I'll be in a group with non-offending parents and I do not need to grovel to get to leave at a reasonable time every Monday for 12 weeks to make this happen and that felt totally liberating. I'm sure there will be lots of downsides, but for instance I'll be able to actually do the physical therapy I haven't in eight months of a badly sprained ankle because I can't take time off work for myself, only for children. And I have insurance for another six months and can keep seeing the therapist who's going to tell me that's a bad way to do things. So I think overall it's going to be really positive, but I may actually be here a bit more.
Chronic ankle pain would be nice to avoid.
So I think overall it's going to be really positive, but I may actually be here a bit more.
"But"??
I'm sure there's a book that helps ankle pain.
I hope things work out for you and the kids, Thorn.
149: I was in a dead-end job that paid decently and recently let me work from home so it hasn't mattered that if I'd had to take of work to deal with all the days one child had been sent home from school, I'd have used all my vacation for the year. I'm juggling a bunch of crises right now, definitely more than I can easily manage. I'm glad to have spent almost 15 years on something I could put away at the end of the day and that let me learn that I have interesting skills others seem not to, but I suspect there are other things I can do with my life. And for now, handling two children's chronic conditions that are acute at the moment is probably the way to go, plus finally getting the house under control and so on.
AND since I hadn't previously requested child support and haven't been living on a budget that counts on that coming in, that's going to be just bonus money.
Any advice, especially from academics here who've been on search committees or the like
A helpful list of things to not do.
Good luck Thorn! I'm glad you're sounding so chipper.
And good luck Barry!
Just don't forget to wear sweatpants.
That's big news Thorn. 156 seems like a good perspective to have (particularly your comment about taking some satisfaction in your skills but feeling comfortable putting it away). I wish you luck making progress on ankle / house / crises over the next couple of month -- and, as you know, everything takes longer than it should -- and will be interested in updates as that progresses.
Even though I assume she's not looking in academia, the list of "how not to get the job" tips in 158 might work for Thorn as well.
and that let me learn that I have interesting skills others seem not to
In my head, that part was read by Liam Neeson.
151: Got a link to that account handy? If you don't want to post it here, then the email address by my name here is valid.
I'm kind of feeling like I missed out by not making plans to smoke up today. Not only is it 4/20, but work has been busy lately and I have the house to myself all this week. Wouldn't do it in the house, of course, but the back patio would be fine. My wife isn't interested in it herself but I'm 99 percent sure she has no objection to me doing it as long as I don't stink things up. When I walk my daughter home from daycare, there are almost always people hanging around who smell like weed; I could have just walked up there alone yesterday or the day before and asked them if they have any for sale. Maybe a tiny bit rude but what the hell, it's not like they're trying to be sneaky about it. But it's already noon, and I have plans tonight with friends, and the weather's shitty.
Smoking alone sounds a tiny bit sad, but I've done a lot sadder stuff, and it would have taken more than just a week to coordinate with my most stoner-ish friends. (They're very organized stoners. But also, they don't live right around here.) If that's really the only obstacle, maybe tomorrow, I guess.
I saw it over a montage of knife-throwing and parkour.
And I bet she didn't need 38 cuts to get over a fence.
I... am having a hard time processing the Juicero story. It's easy enough to believe consumers and VCs alike would be willing to waste money on an absurdly overpriced specialised appliance with features nobody needs. What I don't get is... bags. Who constitutes the market for home-deliverd bags of already-juiced juice? I thought the whole point of juicing was to take all that boring *fresh* salad and fruit that's supposed to be so good for you and squeeze it into a form that you can gulp down and cure your cancer without tiring your jaw from chewing?
Everybody's laughing because you can squeeze the bags with your hands and don't need the iJuicer, but who needs any of this? Surely the whole point of juicing for people who care enough about it to foot the expense is to watch FRESH food turned into beverage, before your very eyes? Wtf, this is like Spinal Tap for Kickstarter, right? This can't be real.
168: Exactly. I am so amazed that anyone ever fell for this, and I hope everyone with a Juicero feels like an idiot now.
I feel stupid paying money for drinks without alcohol because the mark-up is so big. I know the mark-up for alcohol is even bigger, but I figure most of that is taxes and with taxes I buy civilization.
Has Rhik Samadder done this thing yet in his column in the Groan, or does that treat await us?
170 is possibly the most enlightened thing ever written.
The Juicebro story certainly convinced me that the top bracket is at least at least half as low as it should be. If I ever needed convincing in the first place.
tax bracket but you knew what I meant.
Everybody's laughing because you can squeeze the bags with your hands and don't need the iJuicer, but who needs any of this? Surely the whole point of juicing for people who care enough about it to foot the expense is to watch FRESH food turned into beverage, before your very eyes? Wtf, this is like Spinal Tap for Kickstarter, right? This can't be real.
Well, ostensibly that's what this was supposed to be - the machine was juicing fresh stuff (and had all sorts of pointless techery to verify it was fresh. Turns out not so much.
And as long as I'm on the subject of disbelief, man I was really hoping the link in 136 was one of those Bansai Kitten deals, where the horror builds as I read and then I get the joke just in time to spare myself a proper fit of outrage. But no, I guess the asshole really did it. If I were one of his kids reading this, I would be furious for the rest of my life.
175: So you're telling me that somewhere along the way, the concept went from being a regular juicer to a bag squeezer instead? This was viewed as a sensible compromise solution to whatever problem? Forget the carrots, let's just ship the customers bags? No. I still don't get it.
168: If it were already pure juice it would take a lot less time than 1.5-2 minutes to get 8 ounces out of a pack. I'd guess it's some partially processed form, like derinded and maybe diced or something.
Wait, the bags just had juice in them, not like bits of fruit or semi-processed stuff that the juicer actually made into juice on demand? My next kickstarter- a machine that takes bottles of juice and removes the cap for you, for the low price of $199.
One of you should really make and sell a very expensive Bone Broth maker, with bag of beef and chicken bones and gristle that come pre-sealed, and you just plop the bag into the Brothcero.
Yeah, 178 basically. Not a regular juicer, but not just bags of juice either.
"In fundraising meetings, Evans promised a revolutionary machine capable of squeezing large chunks of fruits and vegetables, said two people who agreed to invest in the company. "
Sounds like it took a year to squeeze $120 million out of a bunch of gullible Silicon Valley VC investors. That's definitely more than I could do with my own hands and not get arrested.
Says Mr I'm-Too-Moral-to-Trade-in-Looted-Antiquities.
183: Just what are you implying?
Sometimes when we crush, the honesty's too much.
I have to turn my head and lie.
It would be more impressive if the packs were literally shrink-wrapped, vacuum-sealed whole fruit and kale and whatnot. But man, $120 million. Silicon Valley has figured out the worst parts of centralized planning.
186 Makes me feel like I'm wasting my life. I need a new grift.
There's an opinionated Alvy Singer Juicero I heard you say Jew joke in there somewhere but I've had too many beers to make it.
The VC goons that missed out on Theranos were all begging to be allowed in on this one.
To me the most hilarious part of the Juicero fiasco is the way they managed to dupe the VCs into believing they had come up with an innovative way to disrupt the juice industry when there's really only one way to make juice and it's very low-tech.
Have you seen how much a Vitamix machine goes for? I think maybe they smelled that there were lots of suckers swimming in the sea. They just didn't know that the count included them.
In conclusion, if the juice wasn't good enough for the yeast, it's not good enough for you.
192: But if you have a smart juicer than your juice consumption can go directly on to your Facebook page and then you can compete with your friends over who drinks the most juice.
Have you seen how much a Vitamix machine goes for?
Vitamix machines are great (for a certain type of person). My brother has had one for years and uses it for things like grinding grains as well as juicing.
This is very hilarious and very different from me buying an overpriced watch-pedometer.
Which aisle of Trader Joe's has the grain?
197: Since you're a mathematician, can't you just count how many steps you take?
We should probably buy a new blender. It's from 1960 something and smells like burning rubber when you run it. However, we run it about once a year.
Possibly in the baking provisions aisle. Although grains are commonly sold ready ground- it has a name that will come to me in a minute, begins with "f".
200: Have you taken the parking brake off?
Anyway, I'm in about as much of a rush to grind my own grain as I am to spend enough for 30 cases of beer on a blender.
The shocking aspect of the Juicero story for me is that Evans apparently didn't go to Stanford. Have things gotten so bad that you don't even need a Stanford connection to bilk VCs out of $100 million plus?
I feel like the first part of this from yesterday, up to but excluding stats watch, puts my current thoughts about the Democratic party pretty well. Anyone want to tell me why that's stupid? http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/04/200pm-water-cooler-4192017.html
207: Bad, good, depends on your perspective.
205: That kind of person is called a Count. Didn't you watch Sesame Street?
Anyway, if juicing things wasn't a well-known thing to defraud people about, why did Dan Aykroyd make that Bass-O-Matic commercial back before some of you were born?
Back when Richard Pryor could threaten to kill white people and we'd all just laugh.
212 Yeah but Ackroyd didn't think to send you bass in a bag every week.
A few years ago my graduate students ordered a bottle of Dan Aykroyd's boutique vodka that comes in a bottle shaped like a skull. It tasted like plain old vodka to me.
Someone should market vodka that's sold in bags and uses a special machine to squeeze it out.
One more here interested in 151, busy tonight but possibly tomorrow afternoon some free time.
You can buy individual-shot sized bags of liquor at grocery stores in Nebraska.
217 That's where your macerated fruits from the other thread come in .
"The Murder of Dan Ackroyd's Acting Career."
221: Worthless, but better than an actual recommendation from Kissinger.
217: Artisanal vodka is another obvious but absurdly successful scam these days.
224: To be fair, the bottle does look pretty cool. I wanted to put some reagent in it and store it on the shelf with the other chemicals, but I suspect that would have been in violation of something.
Speaking of not wasting money on booze, I think it was Teo who recommended Ezra Brooks to me. I kept getting it confused with Evan Williams, which I don't like as much.
Oh hey, Juicero had also advertised that it could remotely prevent your press from accepting a bag, in cases of product recall.
https://twitter.com/matt_levine/status/855144860407517184
When I read stories like that, I think, "why aren't we grifting 100s of millions out of rich libertarian idiots?" Collectively we have several times the intelligence and creativity to come up with a plausible grift with enough technobabble to be appealing. Neb has the Stanford connection.
But while we're at it, perhaps I can convince you to purchase some of my iJuicePods? ($15/pod, packs of three for $50) Through advanced technology, I reduce fresh, artisinal, heirloom fruits to most their nutritious essence, and then freeze them in eco-friendly cardboard rolls with easily removable BPA free metal lids on either end. You store them in your freezer, and then when you want juice, you simply put them in my patented iPitcher,* add my special reverse-titrated H2O formula,** stir with my earth friendly wooden iSpoon,*** and bam! Juice!
*Normally $399, but for you, a mere $199
**Sold in packs of 3, $40/pack. Buy 19, get the 20th free.
***Only $50 extra if you buy with the iPitcher.
($15/pod, packs of three for $50)
Nice touch.
Has the (supposed) note from the Juicero CEO been posted here yet? Should it be its own thread? Maybe so.
and then freeze them in eco-friendly cardboard rolls with easily removable BPA free metal lids on either end.
These are recycled toilet paper rolls with aluminum on each end held in place by a rubberband, yes?
232
I am not at liberty to reveal my technologically advanced state-of-the-art patented trade secrets.
229. The problem with being brighter than the average grifter is that when you think up a good grift your own mind tells you, "Nah, nobody would ever buy such a transparent piece of crap." Whereas the people who get rich grifting run with it anyway and fid that millions of people will in fact buy it.
That's your problem. Me, I'm just too noble.
I think she goes to the grocery store and buys frozen juice, then tapes her value-added branding over the package.
Theranos is a really clear story of a scam stopped by a regulator (with an internal whistleblower). Herbalife is also a scam, but a more complicated and still interesting story.
Thomas Sydenham, a 17th century English doctor who was part of the general European trend to move medical knowledge out of the 2nd century, was once talking to a popular quack in a coffee house. He said something like, "Any rationale person would prefer my system to your quackery. The quack said, "Look out of the window. How many rational people do you think you see?" Sydenham replied, "I don't know. Perhaps one in four." "Then I will take the rest," said the quack.
"Internal whistleblower" was the rejected anatomical name for the Sigmoid portion of the colon.
226: Thanks! Most of the liquor stores around me seem to have stopped carrying it for some reason, though.
Here's the note from the Juicero CEO (allegedly). It certainly sounds plausibly blowhard and I don't see any satirical giveaways.
Although the video where he shows how impractical it is to squeeze the bags yourself - and he takes the mush out of the bag before squeezing it - is some rock-solid slapstick buffoonery right there.
I think the Juicero's wi-fi feature makes a lot more sense now. What if there is a recall on spinach? Wouldn't you want your juicer to know about it? In fact, its pretty irresponsible to use any juicer that doesn't have wi-fi.
Come on, you know part of the marketing was that they'd sell info about what juices the users were drinking so that ad agencies can try micro targeting. "I see you drink a lot of Spinach Broccoli Bash. Here's an ad for GasX quick release tablets."
I'm pretty sure everybody gets lots of ads for those.
It would be pretty annoying if your juicer refuses to work because the internet is down. But I guess that's the future to which we must all adjust.
Juicero is now offering refunds to all customers.
Dammit, I spilled bong water on the couch.
This is good on the larger problems in Silicon Valley that have led us to Juicero.
Try blaming the kids or a hired stripper.
If you don't specify you hired the stripper, your wife will get suspicious unless she knows you already have friends who are strippers.
Drinking whisky until you vomit will make a stain sufficient to hide all period prior ones, but it's hard to drink that much and remember to vomit on top of the spill.
here's really only one way to make juice and it's very low-tech.
That's why you should all invest in my cat-skinning startup, meowr.io
I can say the kids hired the stripper.
Looks like there are a lot of grifter domain names available. But no wry.cooter
I'm tempted to buy grifter.club and turn it into a social network for grifters.
I do detect significant differences in quality between vodkas, but it doesn't necessarily line up with "artisanal" (=small distillers) vs "non-artisanal". Some small distillers produce excellent vodka. But you can also get good quality vodka from some Polish distillers for less. My favorite is an Icelandic vodka that is $20 a bottle which is less than many "artisanal" vodkas. Good vodkas can taste fruity, herbal, spicy, etc., and don't burn.
I never understood the juice fad. Why would you waste all that fiber which is just as important to your health as the vitamins? I make smoothies in my blender and happily slurp up the fiber too.
255 The cat and rat farm is one of the original (possibly legendary) American grifts.
BLVR: What's the best con you've come across?LS: I've always loved the homespun symmetry of the cat-and-rat farm. It's simplicity itself: You set up two sheds, one on either side of the road. One contains cats and the other contains rats. You skin the cats to make fur coats and feed their remains to the rats, and then you feed the rats to the cats. The cats and the rats reproduce passim. Presto: fur-coat trade, no overhead. It's a perpetual-motion machine. I gather it dates from the 1910s or '20s, although I don't know specifics of anyone employing it. Maybe it sounds better than it plays in the field. (Wait! Do I need to point out that no cats or rats are ever actually harmed--because such a farm is never actually established?)(from an interview with Luc Sante)
It has to be connected to the internet to work.
It's the perfect appliance for the years of Trump.
{140, 143}.2; best of luck, Thorn and Barry!
Barry, my advice for Skype interviews is to
a. treat it like you're going to be there in person, so maybe you don't have to wear shoes, but since they can see you, dress like you're going to work even if you're home
b. pay attention to your lighting and background, if you can at all change things where you're setting up for the interview
c. you can have notes with things you want to highlight for easily anticipated questions. It doesn't look as weird to have pre-prepared notes when they can't see them, although pure phone interviews make it easiest to have stuff like this in front of you. But I wouldn't write them as speaker notes, just things you don't want to forget to mention, like previous jobs or projects. You don't want to look like you're reading.
d. prepare for the awkwardness of talking at a screen showing the view from a camera on the lid of a laptop placed so that while you're conscious of being visible in the room the whole time all you see is maybe the top of a whiteboard and some of a wall.
Unless you know you're doing a site visit already (which maybe you do?), probably better not to worry about it right now. Especially since what's expected might not be clear until they tell you. I had three on-site interviews, one asked for a presentation and gave me a specific topic area to talk about, one was presented initially as not so formal but looked pretty much like a regular set of job interviews when I got the schedule so I prepared myself for that, and one was just a standard set of interview meetings, plus lunch.
Technically, none were faculty jobs, but I'm guessing you mean faculty in the sense of that's the rank at that institution for people working in libraryish fields, not traditional professorial faculty faculty.
264 Thanks fa!
There is a campus visit (for 2 days!) a couple of days after to the regional campus. And there I'll have to present on a project I've done.
I'm not entirely sure I follow point d, do you mean look at the camera?
264.last, that's exactly what it is.
265.last meaning libraryish fields of course.
I mostly mean Skype sucks and then you're disconnected. My experience was that after turning the computer to show the faces of each interviewer as they introduced themselves, they didn't really pay attention to where the computer ended up, and it was disconcerting, and I had to remind myself that it wasn't a phone call and that someone could still see me.
Ah right. I'm practicing a bit by Skyping with the folks (after avoiding it since the election).
I've been one of the interviewers a few times now on both Skype and phone calls, and we've all mostly agreed that the phone calls are easier to manage. I think some places have setups where you can see everyone at once in the conference room, but not anywhere I've interviewed or worked. Conference calls are awkward, but at least there's no pretending you can tell who's talking by seeing them talk.
On the site visit:
a. You probably know this, but the Q&A after the presentation can be important. It's hard to prepare for beyond saying to yourself "be ready!" but you might already know some of the questions you'll be asked, and don't be afraid to turn questions around to ask the audience. I got asked a question about getting undergraduates into the library/archives, talked through a couple possibilities, paused, said that those ideas probably wouldn't work, though, and then asked what kinds of things they'd been trying. That was probably better than offering some suggestions and being done with it. This also brings in the time-honored strategy of running down some of the clock while the people who ask questions are talking amongst themselves.
b. Breaks are important, and also using the bathroom may be your only free time to yourself all day.
c. I never did a full two-day visit but on one of my visits I had dinner with the lead two people on the search the night before the visit day, and they did a good job explaining the visit process and giving me a sense for how the day would go. I was very fortunate in that all of my visits were fine, but there's a chance you might pick up some red flags, or even be subtly or not-so-subtly warned about things (particular people, subjects that might be a sore point).
d. Don't forget to find out about them. Even if realistically there's no way you'd turn down an offer, you still want to know what you'll be in for. If they schedule you well, there will probably be a meeting or lunch explicitly described as less interview and more opportunity to find out about the place. It's obviously not going to be completely off the record, but it may be with people not otherwise connected with the search, which probably makes it easier to asking about non-work things like what it's like to live there, etc.
Also, if you think you're mouth is going to dry out during your talk, demand a supply of Juicero+ products.
And don't confuse "you're" with "your" even after you preview your comments.
I can not stop laughing about Juicero. It is truly emblematic of our ridiculous times.
You can turn normal times into end times by squeezing bags of times really hard.
269 We will probably use Google Hangouts and this will only be with the one committee member who is in the US (and is more of the specialist in my area). Maybe there will be another person on the call/Hangout, but the full committee is at the regional campus so seeing everyone in the room is not likely to be a problem.
And that's all very helpful. Thanks.
If Juicero really dies a corporate death, does that invoke the no more maceration rule?
This deals with an interesting question I had wondered about: https://monthlyreview.org/2017/04/01/who-is-behind-the-assault-on-public-schools/
"Juicing as a Platform" would have been the perfect title for Jose Canseco's book.
Canseco turns out to be a semi-interesting person to follow on Twitter. Forget what led me to do so in the first place.
277: It's not one person or ideology behind the assault on public schools. Evangelicals hate them because they teach evolution and sex ed. Mainline conservatives hate them because they see them as indoctrinating students with left wing ideas (which has a grain of truth to it due to the generally left-leaning nature of reality), various corporations see them as profit centers, and free market ideologues think markets are the solution to everything so they must work just great on education.
Seriously though, somebody needs to kill the expansion of the term "platform" into new areas of life.
281 Those are among the answers he comes up with, also white supremacists plus the Powell memo.
282: How about "Juiceware as a service"?
Juice in time vs. juice in case.
272: I wish this were my reaction. I also can't quite stop thinking about it, but instead of laughing, I find myself tempted to hate everyone involved: the lunatic/con-man founder, of course, and the VCs who threw $120 million at it, of course, but also anybody who ever looked at this thing and thought it might be something they wanted. The magical thinking and lack of perspective required to look at this product and think it could represent an improvement in your life, to me comes from the same place in the psyche that, say, makes people spend fortunes on designer outfits for their dogs.
These times are making it hard to be a better person.
You know, some people are into juice and those people probably spend good money on it and probably get annoyed about having to clean their juicer. So maybe the product has some niche market appeal, minus the broader stupidity of the appification of the whole thing. Its basically a Soda Stream for juice.
If it was launched as a Kickstarter, it might make some sense and maybe could find a profitable niche market. Its VC's pouring $120 million into the thing that confounds me.
It would be Soda Stream for juice if Soda Stream required you to input 2 liter bottles of Pepsi in order to make a cola.
I'll be contrarian-- lots of people love fashionable gadgets, including ones for the kitchen. Is the snark level at the prepackaged gourmet dinner companies as intense? Not necessarily the customers, but the scorn that someone would start a company for people who can't be bothered to pick a recipe and do their own shopping.
I also think that Juceiro is off-base in thinking that its a bad thing that people can squeeze their juice bags and get juice. What it is is an opportunity.
Buying an $8 juice bag is a far lower barrier to entry than spending $400 and a big chunk of counter space. It would make a lot more sense to get people started buying your over-priced juice bags, then up-sell them on the stupid gadgets.
291/293: Yeah, but the maddening thing here is that the appliance literally offers zero added value on top of the stupid bags. If you don't want to clean a conventional juicer, you can buy pre-squoze juice. If you have money to burn, at least the dinner delivery services save you some labor -- this thing does not. It is functionally equal to an unplugged Foreman grill stood up on one side; a squeezer that only squeezes things that don't need squeezing. It may be the very dumbest product I have ever seen.
Or: what Moby said.
The only value added by the appliance is that it notifies you when a bag of juice as been recalled. This would only seem to be worth $400 (plus the inability to obtain juice when the wifi is down) if recalled juice was very common. Which suggests that Juceiro is the only juice company whose employees shit in 1 of every 10 batches of juice or the only one honest about it. Either way, disruptive.
I never understood the juice fad. Why would you waste all that fiber which is just as important to your health as the vitamins? I make smoothies in my blender and happily slurp up the fiber too.
Pretty much. I saw somebody referring to juice as junk food. That's maybe overstating things--depending on your diet, you may well get some nutrients you otherwise wouldn't--but not by much. "Semi-healthy treat" might be the best description. And yeah, the contrast with smoothies, which are hella good for you, is striking.
I eat only raw vegetables and whole grains cooked in rainwater.
I invested a little bit of money I inherited from my grandmother in the stock of Odwalla juice company because I liked their juice. I lost most of my investment two weeks later when Odwalla e-coli poisoned a bunch of their customers.
It turns out that you really should pasteurize your juice. If Juceiro isn't doing that, then maybe they really do need the wi-fi feature.
The only value added by the appliance is that it notifies you when a bag of juice as been recalled.
And, probably a much more frequent scenario, when it is one day out of date.
291
It could be advertised like partially baked bread or pies--it's packaged food with the veneer of homemade. It's basically store bought juice, but you get to do some meaningless squeezing to pretend like it's fresh squeezed. There's probably actually a huge market for that, especially if you geared it at kids--moms can feel like they're being slightly healthier, kids can enjoy squeezing their capri sun bags. If you get the packaging right, you could probably end up charging $3-4 a bag, or whatever the ballpark figure is for Whole Foods yuppie junk food.
296 OTOH if they had had a Juicero for Soylent it probably could have prevented a lot of explosive diarrhea.
We've been shitting people!
297
Yeah. And if you have an eating disorder are an image obsessed celebrity, juices are sugar and calories without filling you up.
In general though, I don't get the idea of "green" in any beverage. Green veggies are delicious when cooked properly. They're disgusting in sweet smoothies or juices. Carrots can work in juices/smoothies because they're already kind of sweet, and they go well with apple as a flavor, but in general I'd pick a juice without carrots to one with.
I had an awesome traditional Moroccan juice, carrot + orange + a bit of cinnamon. When I first tasted it I guessed it also had apple and maybe banana, but it was very simple.
I might make the family go to the pizza place with $1 bottles of Straub. It's not beer. It's disrupted barley.
Juceiro hot take: using Juceiro as proof that capitalism (or even just Silicon Valley or venture capital) is dumb/failing is like using Solyndra to prove that gov't shouldn't invest in green energy.
As the "hot take" label indicates, I don't entirely buy 308, but I do think there might be some truth there. This is inspired by Ezra's take: "Is Juceiro dumb? Sure. But an actually innovative investment climate will necessarily fund some dumb ideas."
Where I think the dumbness of Juceiro is important is that it reveals specific tendencies/pathologies/blind spots that are probably net negative. Funding dead end technologies--or simply tech that fails to come to fruition--is inevitable, but Juceiro typifies SV in that, even if it works, it doesn't make the world better, just separates yuppies from their money (in order to give it to other yuppies). And that's true whether you can hand-squeeze the bags or not.
It's basically store bought juice, but you get to do some meaningless squeezing to pretend like it's fresh squeezed.
In what sense is it "pretending"? It's in (prepped) fruit format, then, within 2 minutes, you have juice. As long as the fruit itself is fresh*--which AFAICT it is--that's definitionally fresh-squeezed.
Whether it's any more nutritious, I have no idea. You'd think that fresh-squeezed would be healthier than pasteurized, and that pasteurized would be advisable (per 300.1), but it may be a meaningless difference.
*by which I mean not preserved or whatever. It's obviously less fresh than what you'd pluck off your personal fruit tree.
If you can squeeze it with your hands from the bag, it's pretty much prejuiced, no? At which point, not really fresh in the sense it would be if it hadn't been pulverized already. You're buying a bag of juice that was already squeezed in a factory someplace, with some soft pieces left in it so it seems chunky.
311: OK, that makes sense. I've heard a lot of contradictory stuff (including claims that it's literally just juice, which is apparently straight-up wrong), so I'm unclear.
I guess what's mystifying is why it wouldn't be chunks of fruit. Like, if they did that, then it would really be fresh-squeezed, and you would absolutely need their machines. I guess that will come out in the inevitable round of recriminations.
305:
I like putting some kale in my smoothies because I like them a little tart and grassy. Maybe that just shows that I don't like super-sweet drinks.
310-312: It's macerated pulp and juice, not yet separated, which is what the squeezing is for. It's basically what you'd get from step 1 of using a Norwalk juicer, a product of the early days of juice/raw food mania. The idea was that the heat created by spinning blade type juicers would taint the rawness of the food and thereby lose precious nutrients. So they made these gigantic clunky contraptions best suited for defingering children but which would also first macerate your veg into a runny pulp using something like a (slow-moving) meat grinder, and then you'd take that mess in a cheesecloth bag and put it in a hydraulic press to squeeze out the precious fruitily fluids, leaving you with a bag of cellulose and juice stains all over everything in your kitchen. (I know this because my parents were hippies before Rupert Murdoch turned them into fascists.)
You can see exactly what the Juicero people are giving you in their QVC-besymboled bags, right there in their credulity-defying video response to the whole business in which they discourage hand-squeezing -- sorry, "hacking" -- by opening the fucking bag first and squeezing the pulp with their bare hands. Gosh, what a mess! Better stick with the approved squeezing method, huh?
As ranty as I've been about this story, it may surprise that I basically agree with 309, that the big lessons to be taken from this are limited, except that maybe wealth inequality is approaching let-them-eat-cake territory in the US. It's more the personal failing attached to this that infuriates me as opposed to what it "says" about SV or capitalism or whatever.
If you can squeeze it with your hands from the bag, it's pretty much prejuiced, no?
You seem to be confusing squeezing with pouring. Again, it takes 90+ seconds! It's not that what they're selling is really juice disguised, it really is chopped fruit, per the gif; it's more that their fancy machine provides no added value as a mechanical device.
(I know this because my parents were hippies before Rupert Murdoch turned them into fascists.)
I'm sure he had his reasons.
Anyway, "It's not just over-priced machinery of limited value, it's also incorporating pseudo-science" isn't at all damping my desire to laugh at it.
Could you cut the bag open, put the stuff in a blender, and make a smoothy.
The dairy in smoothies and my dislike of non-dairy substitutes in things like smoothies or ice cream keeps me drinking juice. I like pulp in orange juice but it doesn't seem popular in places that sell large bottles of juice.
I heard about this really cool juicer you might want to buy.
If you can squeeze it by hand and get the same volume of liquid juice as the machine, it's already mostly if not all juice. Try juicing a carrot by hand, or even pineapple chunks. You're not going to end up with liquid after 90 seconds of gentle squeezing.
You're not going to end up with liquid after 90 seconds of gentle squeezing.
Sorry, I juiced a lot as a kid.
The most shocking thing I learned from this thread is that the founder did not go to Stanford.
322. Pulpero does mean what you need it to mean there, but on reading it I had this vision of a guy who fights octopodes in a flooded stadium.
325: I realise on second reading you meant as an analogy to "torero" but my mind went straight to "LUCHA PULPO LIBRE!" and is still there.
Juicero teardown. It may be ridiculous, but it's high quality ridiculous.
I respect your commitment to the thread, but I think that was linked already in a different one.
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